Your views on the proposal to reduce revenue funded highway maintenance activity by 5%

Overview

Norfolk County Council is responsible for a range of services including social services, trading standards, fire and rescue, highways and transport, recycling centres, libraries, museums, education and supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities, ensuring sufficient school and nursery places, and arranging school transport. 

Each year, Norfolk County Council reviews its budget and proposes the efficiencies and cost reductions it will need to make for the following year to balance the budget.   

Even though our overall spending is expected to increase next year, this is not enough to keep pace with inflation (the costs of providing our services) and the expected increases in demand for our services - particularly in adult social care and children's services. 

This means that for 2027-28 there is a budget gap of £35.927 million. At their meeting of 5 October 2026, Cabinet agreed to take forward proposals totalling £32.273m for 2027-28.

In this consultation we are asking for your views on a proposal to reduce revenue funded highway maintenance activity by 5%. This includes activities such as drainage works, sign cleaning, footway and cycleway repairs, public rights of way maintenance and fence and barrier repairs.

We will not stop undertaking any single maintenance function but instead install a service standard reduction across all activities.

This is estimated to save around £475,000.

Why your views matter

We want to find out what people think about our proposal to reduce revenue funded highway maintenance activity by 5%.

We are consulting through:

• The online consultation, which is also available as a paper copy and in different formats
• Email /Letter to key stakeholders and partners
• Email to members of the Norfolk Residents’ Panel

The consultation runs from Monday 26 October 2026 and closes on Monday 7 December 2026.

Please note that if we receive any consultation responses after this date, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to take them into account.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our county councillors as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about the budget proposals.

If you need a copy of this consultation document in a different format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk, call 0344 800 8020 or Text Relay on 18001 0344 800 8020 (textphone) and we will do our best to help.

How we will make our decision and report back to you

We will take a report about the findings of this consultation to the Norfolk County Council Cabinet meeting in January 2027.

Norfolk County Council’s select committees will comment on the budget proposals, before Cabinet finalises its proposals in January 2027 and the Full Council makes a final decision on the budget in February 2027.

Our county councillors will consider the consultation responses we receive very carefully. In particular, they will take into account:

• The impact of any proposal on individuals, groups or communities and in particular on people identified as having 'protected characteristics' under the Equality Act 2010. The protected characteristics are: age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. As well as this equality impact assessment, councillors will consider the impact of proposals on rural areas
• The views of people and stakeholders consulted
• The evidence of need and what is proven to work effectively and well
• The financial and legal positions and any constraints at the time
• Any potential alternative options, models or ideas for making the efficiencies.

Your opinions are valuable to us. Thank you for taking the time to read this and respond.

The consultation questions should take about 10 minutes to complete.